


To Martyrdom

by Polomonkey



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode: s01e02 Fugue, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 14:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11106669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polomonkey/pseuds/Polomonkey
Summary: "You were a lonely child, weren’t you? I know, because I was one too.”In which Mason Gull picks Morse as his target after all.





	To Martyrdom

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little episode AU for Fugue, spoilers for that ep abound. Written for h/c bingo square 'lost childhood'.

“Aren’t you a clever boy?” said Gull.

Endeavour wasn’t. If he was, he’d have worked it out sooner. He had seen the indecent grin in the false Cronyn’s eye as he talked of the killer. Had heard him freely admit the respect he had for the perpetrator of such grisly crimes. He might have saved the real Cronyn’s life if he’d acted faster. He might have saved his own.

Because surely he would die here, bound and alone in some abandoned farmhouse at the mercy of a madman.

“Not clever enough to catch me, of course,” Gull said smoothly. “But clever enough to parse my clues. I don’t know what I’ve have done without you, Morse. Those bumbling colleagues of yours wouldn’t know Tosca from Top of the Pops.”

Endeavour shifted a little, tugging at the ropes around his wrists. But they were tightly tied and there was no give.

“I’m glad my designs weren’t wasted on you,” Gull continued, in a tone that was almost fond. “You’re such an odd boy, Endeavour – may I call you Endeavour? Like no policeman I’ve ever met before, and believe me I’ve met far too many.”

He crouched down so he was eye to eye with Endeavour, who couldn’t help but lean back into the brick wall behind him.

“I meant what I said before, you know. A policeman's need to save people is born of a need to save one person. You’re no exception, lad, I can read you like a book.”

“Is that so?” Endeavour ground out.

“Oh yes. You were a lonely child, weren’t you? I know, because I was one too.”

“We’re not the same,” Endeavour spat but Gull merely smiled.

“Very lonely. Especially after losing your mother so young.”

Endeavour blanched, then tried to recover. He didn't want to allow Gull the satisfaction of seeing him rattled.  


“Oh, I can’t claim psychological acuity for that one, sadly. I simply did a little digging on your history.”

Gull peered at him.

“You were close, I can tell. It must have broken your heart.”

Endeavour thought of his mother for a second; the smell of her hair, the soft music of her voice.

“You know nothing,” he said, voice steady.

“I admit I was on the wrong track at first,” Gull said, seemingly unoffended. “It wasn’t hard to find out that your father beat her.”

Endeavour couldn’t help but flinch.

“I found the old police report, I talked to old neighbours. They all said what a shame it was. The lovely gentle wife and her brutal husband. Then cancer taking her off so young and her little boy left all alone. Oh, they were positively melancholy with it.”

Endeavour took one shallow breath, then another. There hadn’t been enough air in the room before, and now he felt like he was choking.

“I expected more of the same when I asked around about his new wife. But no. No one ever reported a scratch on her, nor on little Joyce.”

It physically hurt to hear his sister’s name on Gull’s tongue, in a way Endeavour hadn’t anticipated. His best kept secrets, all laid bare. Not even Joycie had known the truth.

“But what about her little boy? No one seems to remember much. A quiet lad. Mostly stayed indoors. Never came out to play with the other children.”

Gull paused, as if deep in thought.

“I was on the wrong track, as I said. I thought your mother was the reason, the one you wanted to save all these years.”

He reached out to stroke Endeavour’s cheek.

“It was only when I saw you race to find the little girl that I understood. Your mother got away. In the most definitive way possible, she was saved from your father.”

He sighed.

“But no one saved you, did they?”

Endeavour heard the words from a distance, as though he was only half there. The other half of him was crouched beneath his childhood bed, listening to his father’s footsteps coming closer. Scrabbling at the cellar door, where he’d been left in the dark. Gripping the bed frame so hard his knuckles turned white, as the belt came down on his back again and again…

“There now,” Gull said tenderly, wiping away the tear that trickled unbidden down Endeavour’s cheek. “There’s no shame in it. We were both shaped by our pasts, Endeavour. It’s natural that you should want to protect the boy you were. Futile, but natural.”

Endeavour took a ragged breath and it sounded for all the world like a sob.

“There now,” Gull said again, and his voice was almost a comfort.

**Author's Note:**

> Meant to be a oneshot but I'm tempted to write a bit more! Feel a bit bad leaving Morse dangling...


End file.
